Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

I mentioned last week that I’m traveling this week and next. Our first real stop came this morning when we arrived at my husband’s family’s cabin in the North Woods of Minnesota. Harry’s family was one of several families that found a nice lake northwest of Hibbing that was perfect for their summer vacations. In the beginning, they camped at a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC – part of President F. Roosevelt’s New Deal program) camp on Big Bear Lake. Eventually, all of the families leased land from the State of Minnesota and built cabins along one side of the lake.

As you can imagine, the original couples who built those cabins for their families are mostly gone. This past fall, we lost one of the younger members of that generation, and tonight we are having a Bear Lake celebration of his life. There will be tears and laughter as there usually is with this kind of gathering, but we will all remember it fondly.

While I have not known this family nearly as long as my husband has (he was a tad bit younger when the cabin was being built in 1957!), I still feel a part of this group. So I’m doing what it is that I always do in situations such as this. I made a card for my friend, Ruth, who is the widow of our departed friend.

The design on the card front is NOT Designer Series Paper. It’s a stamped layer, and it’s the first time I’ve tried to stamp using the 2-step stamping that’s a part of the Verdant Garden Stamp Set. As I was doing the stamping, I had the impression that I was doing an awful job of it. I was so frustrated that it wasn’t perfect. But I told myself to keep going – that it would be good practice, and I could start a “real” copy of the design after I got better at the stamping. When I finished, I left the room to take care of a chore or two. Imagine my surprise when I returned and saw what I thought was a perfectly acceptable bit of stamping. Perfection is NOT necessary. Making something that catches your eye and looks pleasing is quite enough, thank you very much! And this is a rustic style of stamp – no hard lines here! So off I went to make a project.

After lots and lots of tries with Designer Papers, I decided this layer was it’s own “designer” layer. So I just layered up some cardstock behind it and off I went to make a card. The base on which I stamped was Soft Sea Foam Cardstock. I used Garden Green and Pear Pizzazz Ink as those are colors in the Garden Lane Designer Series Paper set that I’d originally intended to use with this. Once I had the card layered up, I turned it around in all directions and finally decided on a landscape layout. As I don’t have any Garden Green or Pear Pizzazz ribbon, I used one of the white ribbons in my stash, the 5/8″ Whisper White Flax Ribbon that I used in a project last week.

The sentiment is on a single-line stamp in the Beautiful Day Stamp Set. I tired all sorts of ways of cutting that stamped image out – punches and dies. But none of them worked for me. Then in dawned on me that, since this was a rubber stamp, I’d have some good luck using a Stampin’ Write Marker to color individual words. That’s how I ended up with the three words in a circle shape. The Layering Circle Dies came out of their cupboard pretty quickly after that.

I hope I get a chance to do some crafting activities that I can share with you during the rest of my trip. If not, you’ll find me back here towards the end of July when I’ve recovered from my travels!

Robin Messenheimer

I have been stamping and paper crafting for over 30 years, and have been an Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator for 11 years.

My favorite part of being a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator is teaching others to enjoy crafting themselves. Not only do I conduct classes in person, I write tutorials for teaching anyone who has internet access. No matter if you're in my area on the east side of Hawaii's Big Island or anywhere else in the world, let me know if there's something you'd like to learn!

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